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Went to LA to celebrate March family birthdays. My nephew, Sebastian, was one of the celebrants, celebrating his FIRST birthday! Too cute! Got to hang out with my family (and some friends that I also consider family). Went to a couple of my favorite eateries, of course (Daikokuya, Jessie’s Mexican Food

When we got back, some cousins came for a visit. Despite having just received our new couch and ottoman, making the sofa uber lounge-comfy, we managed to keep them active the whole time they were here. The threat of rain pushed us to get out and go out and see the sight “before it rain(ed)”, but it never did rain and we managed to see a whole bunch of the San Francisco tourist highlights (Chinatown, Lombard/Crooked Street, Union Square, Painted Ladies, Golden Gate Park, Golden Gate Bridge, Fisherman’s Wharf, Haight/Ashbury) along with a couple of our new favorites (Coffee in West Portal; 9th & Irving; BiRite Creamery). We even made it to Muir Woods and Sausalito one day and San Jose on another day!

Then, last week, I went to Crafty Crafty night at Counterpulse and crafted with a bunch of strangers for a couple of hours. VERY PRODUCTIVE and fun to meet new people. Beats crocheting in front of the TV for a while.

The following day, I went to Make SF and took my first Arduino lesson. We made a temperature clock (details on the MakeSF Wiki) and I got to play Rock, Scissors, Paper with a computerized glove.

I WAS going to round out the week by going to Forage SF‘s Underground Farmer’s Market, but when driving up to the place, the line pouring out of the building and nearly wrapping around the closest corner was enough to convince me to keep moving and just wait for the next one… I’ll be there earlier next time.

Somewhere between all of this I also found a drop spindle at the thrift store and made my first yarn (still debating taking a picture or using it for stuffing); I’ve been making some hair accessories (soon to appear on Esty, I hope), I made my first (and second) Shepherd’s Pie; and made it through an iPhone Hello World tutorial. My food log has been slack since the last LA trip and I have been unmotivated (I’d say too busy, but I would be lying) for anything more than Sun Salutations. I am grateful, overwhelmed and excited.

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My husband, McKay, and I take throw-a-dart-on-the-map kinds of weekend trips and on one of my birthdays, we decided to adventure. It was either Bakersfield or Santa Barbara and, for some reason, Bakersfield just called to us. Anyway, fast forward a few hours of finding nothing to do and already having a hotel room booked, we asked the woman at the front desk where we might grab some dinner. She recommended a bunch of chain restaurants (Olive Garden, Cheesecake Factory, etc) found herself discovering what our furled brows and lackluster faces looked like. We, then, asked her where we might get good local Mexican food (and then I added, “I could eat some seafood”), she said, “Well, there’s this place I like, but it’s not in a great neighborhood – it looks kind of dangerous”. PERFECT. After some convincing, she gave us directions on how to get there and off we went.
We arrived to a crowded room of festive people in festive chairs and a loud Mariachi band (at this point, I should mention that my husband, a caucasian, and myself, a Filipino, were the only non-Latino folks at the joint so either we were really self-conscious or they were really all kind of staring at us?) A friendly host seated us, followed by another friendly server. I ordered garlic fish, he ordered lime fish (we only found out that it was lime fish last week – all this time, we thought it was LEMON fish!). I think we stopped talking to each other for about 15 minutes while we each savored our bites (and I stole a few bites of his dish). YUMMMM!!!A few months later, we drove back for lunch and brought some friends with us… Everyone (except me) ordered the same dish – LIME FISH. It was delicious, of course – we only wished it was closer to where we lived.
I ran google searches on this place and the only ones I could find were even further away – Fresno and somewhere just outside Las Vegas. We could not justify the trip, not knowing if they would have said Lime Fish on the menu.
Well, I was giving a colleague a ride to the DMV in Van Nuys the other day and when I pulled out of the parking lot, I decided to look for a place to eat. At first glance I saw a pupusas place and across the street a sign that said “Mariscos”. I made a mental note of the Mariscos place and decided to try the pupusas place. When I started towards the pupusa place, I noticed that the words below “Mariscos” said “Las Islitas”!!! I was so excited that I ended up driving there instead!
I walked in and asked, was met by Elvira who told me that both restaurants are owned by brothers! There are a few restaurants, all owned by the same family (brothers and cousins) and they all have the same basic menu items and each restaurant has its special dishes – luckily, the lime fish is a staple – YAYY!!! I stayed for the salmon (knowing I had to come back later in the evening). It was very heavily seasoned and tastes and comes with a perfect serving of rice and beans (as most their dishes do) – a perfect combination for your palette.Later that evening, I had McKay blindfold himself while I took to him there and surprised him. Of course he ordered Lime Fish and I got a chance to order Mojarra Frita with Garlic Sauce. YUM! See his clean plate?
A word of warning: The lime fish is pretty intensely SOUR. I recommended the Bakersfield place to some friends who tried it and their taste buds were just insulted with the intensity. It’s not for the weak of taste buds, for sure. Neither is the Mojarra Frita – the garlic sauce is basically minced garlic cloves mixed with salt and smeared on top of the fish. It’s very intensely garlic.
Anyway, I’m extremely excited to know that there is one just about 20 minutes from my house! (I just don’t know if we’ll be going to Bakersfield again now that we know this is here)

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yayy, holiday. i spent half my day going through ALL 1596 flickr photos, reorganizing and cleaning up my tags, updating the photos to get the tags i want on them, creating sets i should have been creating for the last 2-3 months, populating and cleaning up my sets. i think i’m about 95% done. YAYY, cleanup! events, projects, and instructions go in sets; people and cities in tags
(organizational structure subject to change)

i tried to put up an html slideshow, but everytime i saved it, it removed the html embed… ideas anyone?

the other half of my day was spent looking for IMAHAN goma dare. i saw an awesome rainbow arching all over downtown LA – i tried to take photos, but none came out with the rainbow in it 😦 we drove all over LA trying to find this sauce, ended up at mitsuwa in santa monica, got hungry and ate at one of the stalls there. this menu item made me curious: